


Miami Vices

by dotYoo



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Family Feels, Gen, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 03:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotYoo/pseuds/dotYoo
Summary: "Our contact in Miami wants to speak with someone from the organization.  Spy, that’s where you come in.”“Naturally,” Spy says neutrally.“Aaand,” Miss Pauling draws out the word, “He specifically asked to speak with a real person, not a mask.”“Ah,” Spy says less neutrally.“Which is where you come in.”  She beams at Scout, whose face is anything but neutral.  “Spy might need backup and you’re the only one who’s already seen him without a mask.”In which Scout and Spy take an involuntary cross-country road trip.  Includes: cannon-typical violence, bad clothing, and unexpected family bonding.





	Miami Vices

**Author's Note:**

> Is this fandom still alive? I love this fandom, whether it's alive or not.
> 
> This was based off of sugarandmemories' post [here](http://sugarandmemories.tumblr.com/post/172968901019/an-idea-for-a-fic-i-want-to-write-where-spy-and) which I planned to make a short fic for and instead made this. TAH DAH.
> 
> Thanks to

“Thank you for coming,” Miss Pauling says.  She is cleanly dressed and holding one of her many clipboards in one hand.  Scout waves at her when he enters the room; Spy rolls his eyes skyward and steps silently into the space just behind Scout’s shoulder.

“Hi,” Scout says, “What’s up?”

“I have an assignment for you,” she says brightly, “Now that you’re both here—”

“Both—?”

Scout actually jumps when he registers Spy in his peripheral vision.  It’s very satisfying. Spy catches the elbow aimed at his throat before it can make contact.  

“Bon matin,” he says smugly.

Scout shakes Spy’s hand away and growls something obscene under his breath.

Miss Pauling clears her throat.  “Yes, hello.” She gestures to two chairs set up between a projector screen and a Kodak Carousel, “If you would?”

Spy takes a seat.  Scout, still glaring, flops into the remaining seat.

Miss Pauling dims the lights and brings the carousel to life.  A picture of the RED team logo appears on the screen. “As you know, I occasionally ask people to do a little ‘extracurricular’ projects for the company,” she says, her air quotes silhouetted in the light of the projector.  “And today I’m tapping you two.”

Spy arches an eyebrow but doesn’t comment.

The carousel clicks to its next slide, showing a loaf of bread.  “As you know, one of our subsidiaries is Red Bread.”

“I thought that was a front,” Scout says.

“The Administrator doesn’t like to use words like ‘front’,” Miss Pauling says with more air quotes, “And besides, Red Bread is a real company servicing the real community of Miami, Florida.  We’re bringing baked goods to other underprivileged ‘subsidiaries’ at affordable prices.” She clicks forward to a picture of a blond man ducking out of a suspicious-looking pizza parlor. “This is Mikhail Vasechkin, one of our local connections.  Apparently there’s been some new development he can’t communicate through writing or phone and he’ll only speak with a RED agent in person. Spy, that’s where you come in.”

“Naturally,” Spy says neutrally.

“Aaand,” Miss Pauling draws out the word, “He specifically asked to speak with a real person, not a mask.”

“Ah,” Spy says less neutrally.

“Which is where you come in.”  She beams at Scout, whose face is anything but neutral.  “Spy might need backup and you’re the only one who’s already seen him without a mask.”

“He’s ugly,” Scout says.  It comes out like a reflex, as though his mouth has fallen back on instinct while the hamster wheel in his head works on something else.  “It’s just a there-and-back, ain’t it? If Spy’s so good he can do it alone.”

“We don’t want to risk it.  This could be a new development about the subsidiary underbelly, or it could be an attempt to capture one of our best agents.  The Administrator and I are in agreement that this is a two-man job.”

Scout looks sharply at Spy.  “In a car, all the way to Miami.  With Spy.”

Spy pointedly does not look away from the projector screen, even as he agrees with the sentiment.  “Well summarized,” he says, “Details?”

“Estimated time: one week.  We’ve already loaded a souped-up car with supplies, maps, and disguises.  Your first destination is written down in an envelope in the glovebox, you’ll get further instructions from there.  No weapons, and no contact until you get back to base. This should be a simple operation, but you’ll be way out of respawn range so make sure you don't die.  You have an hour to pack any personal items before you leave. Then you’re off on a road trip vacation!” Miss Pauling sheepishly tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.  “I’m a little jealous.”

“You could come wi—”

“Thank you, Miss Pauling,” Spy interrupts. “We’ll be ready.  Come along, Scout.”

“But—”

Spy grabs him by the back of the neck and forcibly steers him out of the room.  “ _Come along._ ”

Miss Pauling either doesn’t notice or politely ignores the struggle.  Scout starts shoving in earnest once they’re back out in the desert heat.  “Let _go_ , what the fuck?”

“She obviously cannot take a week off from work and asking would only make her feel worse,” Spy says.

Scout finally yanks himself free and rubs his reddened skin where Spy’s fingers dug in, mumbling, “You don’t have to be a dick about it,” which is as close to ‘thank you for not letting me make a bigger ass of myself than usual’ as he’ll ever get.

“It seems to be the only language you understand,” Spy replies, lighting a cigarette, “I’ll meet you at the car.  I am driving.”

“Asshole’s the only language _you_ understand,” Scout snaps, jogging ahead to the barracks to, presumably, fill a suitcase with dirty laundry and baseball cards. Spy exhales a nicotine cloud.  His disguise kit can hold up to ten cigarettes, but he’s going to need at least double that to make it through the week.

-

_“Minnesota!”_

Spy grunts and almost drops his cigarette when Scout's fist connects with his shoulder.  He’s certainly made up this ‘license plate game’ with the sole intent of punching Spy while he can’t retaliate, and while he’ll never admit it, Spy’s arm is getting sore.  Luckily, the cars on the road are precious few; by the rules of his own game Scout has only been able to hit him six or seven times. Spy subtly rolls his shoulder. He can see Scout grinning in the corner of his eye.

He adjusts the cigarette in his mouth.  “If I were not driving, I would kill you.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Scout says as he begins to play with the radio.  He’s wearing the red-tinted glasses they’d found in the glovebox next to their instructions, which turned out to be nothing more than an address several miles outside of Miami.

 _“I’m no school boy but I know what I like, you should have heard them just around midnight,”_ a singer croons.

“You cannot honestly think you could beat me in a fight.”

_“You think you’ve lost your love, well I saw her yesterday-yi-yay.  It’s you she’s thinking of and she told me what to say-yi-yay--”_

“Oh man, I’m so scared right now.”  Scout holds up his free hand and wiggles his fingers.  “Look at them shakes. So scared.”

_“Hope you’ve got your things together, hope you are quite prepared to die--”_

“If you do not pick a station,” Spy says calmly, “I’m putting a knife through the speaker.”

“You said you didn’t care what we listened to.”  Scout continues to flip through the jumble of radio waves.  It’s a miracle he can hear anything over the noise of the car traveling at 150 mph (courtesy of Engineer’s tinkering and Spy’s impeccable driving), let alone identify the sounds coming through the speakers well enough to decide to look for something else.  “And anyway, you don’t have a knife.”

“There are almost a dozen within reach,” Spy mutters.

“You brought a _weapon_ on this mission?  Spy, I’m hurt! Miss Pauling specifically said--”

“I saw you put your bat in the trunk.”

“For batting practice!  Can’t afford to slack off.”

“I saw you put your _gun_ in the trunk.”

“For shooting practice!  Can’t afford to--”

“You know what,” Spy says abruptly, “There is something I’d like to listen to.  Have you ever played the _quiet game?_ ”

Scout’s incredulity is so strong, Spy can see the expression without turning his head.  “Are you kidding. Are you kidding me right now? You’re seriously treating me like a kid?”

“If the shoe fits--”

“No freakin’ way.  If you felt like being a parent, you missed the boat like twenty years ago.”

Spy sighs slowly through his nose.  “Are we going to have a problem, Scout?”

“No problems from me.”  Scout props his feet up on the dashboard and shoves a piece of gum into his mouth.  He idly spins the radio dial with his toes. A million stations fill the cabin, accompanied by the sound of the most obnoxious open-mouthed chewing Spy has ever had the misfortune to experience.  Scout’s toothy grin tells him none of this is accidental. “How’s about you, Spy? You got anything you’d like to air out?”

Spy takes a deep breath.  His has worked in international espionage since the age of fourteen.  He once spent three years undercover in a maximum security hair salon.  He once escaped a Boxing Day party using nothing but his wits, a pen cartridge, and two sprigs of rosemary.  Surely he can endure one cross-country road trip without killing his _remarkably irritating_ son.

Scout sticks out his gum-covered tongue.  He must have added three more pieces to the one he was chewing because _dear god_ the resulting bubble is going to kill them both.  Spy grabs one of the three knives taped behind the steering wheel and bursts the thing in self defence.  He gets his quiet when the splatter engulfs Scout’s entire head, gluing his mouth shut for three blissful minutes until Spy’s conscience kicks in and he cuts Scout an air hole.

“If you say anything,” Spy says as Scout gasps and sputters back to life, “I will let you suffocate in your own idiocy.”

His gummy passenger probably glares, but the effect is lost under the bright pink candy.  Scout spends the next half hour silently clawing gum off his face. Spy magnanimously doesn’t count his deeply disgusted noises as talking.

-

Scout, who doesn’t seem to handle idleness well at the best of times and began fidgeting in his seat several hours ago, throws himself out the passenger-side door as soon as Spy backs into their designated motel parking space.

“No, don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of our things,” Spy deadpans.  He slings his suit jacket over his shoulder and walks around behind the car before it becomes apparent Scout isn’t coming back.

A quick glance at their room confirms it: the door is open.  Perhaps they’ve chosen a poorly secured placed to stay, but Spy has been driving for ten hours and doesn’t care to search for another.  He collects his case, locks the trunk, and enters their room.

Scout has already claimed the bed farthest from the door.  He sits cross-legged with his attention fixed rapturously on the TV.  Spy assumes there is some kind of baseball game going on.

“Did you at least check the room before you zoned out?”  He asks, closing the door behind him.

“Bathroom’s clear, nothing under the beds,” Scout says.

“Perfunctory.  You realize anyone could have come in here before us?”

“It’s fine.”

“You assume everything is fine,” Spy says, “You have no idea what kind of dangers there are in our line of work.”

“Uh, yeah I do, I get killed like twenty times a day.  Besides, the door was locked and the window in the bathroom ain’t been picked, so.”  He waves his hand in a shushing gesture without looking away from the game.

“Clearly it wasn’t if _you_ could get in,” Spy says, but his finely-honed sense of misplacement is going off.  “Did you steal keys from the manager?”

“Nah,” Scout says with a smirk.

Spy checks his pockets.  He checks them again. He checks his jacket pockets.  He even pats down the twin knife holsters under his shirt because there is no possibility that _Scout picked his pocket._

“Check your gloves?”  Scout asks sarcastically.  Sure enough, he’s spinning their keys on his finger.

“You little brat,” Spy hisses.

“What about your fake molars?  Maybe they’re in there.” When Spy storms towards him, Scout flicks the key ring away.  It pings across the room with unerring accuracy and disappear down the floor vent. “Whoops, clumsy me.”

It takes several very long moments for Spy to master himself.  When he can speak without grinding his teeth, he calmly crosses the room to the TV.  “If you are going to act like a child.”

“Hey--”

“Then you are,” he snaps an antenna, “Grounded.”

The screen immediately flips to static.  Scout lets out a cry of horror and shoves Spy aside, but the damage has already been done: reception is well and truly lost.  He fruitlessly beats the side of the box with his palm. “Nonono _no_.”

“Do you know how to fix a broken receiver?”  Spy twirls the severed metal between his fingers.  “I do, but I seem to have forgotten. If only I could go for a walk to jog my memory without leaving the door unlocked.”

Scout scowls murderously.

“Alas, the keys are misplaced--”

“You're a bastard, you know that?” Scout says as he stomps into his shoes.

“Ah-ah, I believe 'grounded’ means you are to stay here.” Spy moves to lean his shoulders back against the door, “And I want those keys.”

“First, fuck you. Second, I got nothing to get them out, so get the fuck out of my way,” Scout says, roughly shoving Spy’s arm.

Spy continues to block the door.  He wonders how long Scout’s tenuous sense of self-preservation will keep him from attacking.  “Let me be more clear: get the keys, or I will call your mother.”

As it turns out, Scout is even less concerned with his own well being than predicted.  He throws his full weight behind a forearm against Spy’s chest and, when Spy doesn’t yield, moves the arm to his neck.  “Listen, asshole,” Scout growls, “I’m not even gonna pretend to get your relationship with my Ma, but for some reason you make her happy enough to forgive you for running off when she got pregnant.  You and me got shit, sure, whatever, but you do _anything_ to make her even remotely upset,” he grinds his arm into Spy’s throat, presumably for emphasis, “I will fuckin’ kill you.”

Spy grabs Scout’s opposite wrist and bends it the wrong way.  To his surprise Scout rolls his arm with the motion and smashes his elbow into Spy’s side.  Spy counters with a sharp knee to Scout’s gut. They stagger apart in opposite directions.

After a nice long string of curses, Spy uses a bed as leverage to get to his feet.  He manages to grunt, “The feeling is _mutual._ ”

“Fuck,” Scout wheezes from where he’s clutching his stomach and swearing into the carpet.  “I mean _good._ ”

Spy ignores his spasming diaphragm to straighten his tie.  “It is truly a mystery how a woman as lovely as your mother raised a monster like _you_.  I am going to take a shower,” he says, turning towards the bathroom where he can catch his breath away from Scout’s spiteful gaze.

Just as the door closes behind him, he hears Scout mutter, “Probably because she had to do it alone.”

After more than thirty years of intelligence work involving lies, betrayal, and the occasional murder, Spy thought there was nothing anyone could say to hurt him.  He turns on the water and ignores everything he’s thinking.

-

When he exits the bathroom an hour later, Scout has already passed out on the bed by the defunct TV.  Predictably, he tosses in his sleep, mumbling and kicking and shoving the bedclothes away only to frown and throw a searching hand onto the floor when he can’t find them.  Spy watches him feel half-consciously across the carpet for his missing blankets.

“Snipes,” Scout mutters, “Can’tcha just...”

Even unconscious, he is too loud and too energetic.  Spy is probably supposed to feel ‘fondness’ or perhaps ‘contentment’, but all he finds a muted version of his usual annoyance.  

After finding Scout’s name just after his own on RED’s roster (and hadn’t that been a nasty shock), Spy had expected watching his deaths to be unpleasant.  Braced himself for it, even. Instead he found the same irritation he’d feel towards any coworker’s incompetence; watching Scout meet his end in enemy fire felt the same as watching a receptionist load their typewriter backwards.  Spy supposes he never was the sentimental type, but to feel nothing at the repeated deaths of his own child is… disappointing.

Spy removes his tie and shuts off the light.  He listens to Scout shuffle across the mattress until sleep comes for him.

-

Spy is only a morning person through discipline.  It took years of training to get himself out of bed before noon, so he’s surprised to see Scout awake only ten minutes after Spy has made is morning espresso.

“Where the hell did you get coffee?”  He grumbles, hair sticking up in all directions.

“I brought it with me,” Spy says coolly.

Scout blearily smudges the heel of his hand across his eyes.  “Lemme guess, you only brought enough for one.”

“I could be convinced to make another cup, if you--”

“Get the keys, yeah, I get it.”  Scout yawns and shuffles across the room, leaving blankets trailed across the floor in his wake.  “You're such a bastard.”

Spy eyes the blankets with distaste.  “You are twenty-seven years old, not a teenager.  Perhaps consider acting your age.”

Scout flips him off as he disappears into the bathroom.  He even slams the door for effect. It reopens a moment later.  “The fuck are you wearing?”

Spy sips his espresso and refuses to feel any embarrassment.  “The disguise Miss Pauling chose for me. Yours is hanging in the shower.”

“Is that floral print?  Why the fuck are you wearing sunglasses inside?”

“You know, I somehow thought your vulgar word choice was to appeal to our teammates.” Spy sets down his tiny cup. “How foolish of me to think of you as anything but an uncouth man child.”

Scout rolls his eyes and slams the bathroom door a second time.

The truth is that after years wearing a mask, Spy isn’t comfortable with his own uncovered face.  He’d rather deaden his eyesight than be exposed.

By the time Scout emerges from the bathroom, Spy has washed his tiny cup and saucer and set them on the windowsill to dry.  Scout is still wearing his pajamas, but has bent the clothes hanger into some approximation of a hook.

“You don’t really expect that to work,” Spy sneers.

“Chill, asshole.”  Scout peers into the vent, “You’re lucky I’m doing this at all.”

Spy watches as he studies the grating.  Scout looks at it from all angles, adjusts his makeshift fishing tool, and slowly lowers it into the vents.  The wire taps against the metal duct a few times. Scout actually sticks his tongue out in concentration.

“It isn’t possible to—”

“Got it.”  Scout carefully draws the wire back.  Sure enough, the keys dangle off the end.  “Time to put your coffee maker where your mouth is, jackass.”

Spy cocks an impassive eyebrow.  “Can you handle espresso?”

“After the stuff Medic makes for me, I’m gonna need at least three of those before we hit the road,” Scout says dismissively.

“No wonder you’re so short.”

Scout chucks the keys at Spy’s head.  “Asshole,” he grumbles, wandering back into the bathroom.  The shower sputters to life a moment later.

Despite his best efforts, Spy is both mildly impressed at the boy’s dexterity and mildly concerned that Medic is feeding him questionable energy drinks.  He shelves both thoughts and flips the coffeemaker on. It gurgles. The shower rattles. Spy looks out the window on the off-chance something interesting happens outside.  On a whim he rummages through his suitcase for a tube of welding glue and uses it to reattach the TV antennae. It flickers to life when he turns the knob. He turns it to a local news station and attends the espresso.

The shower squeaks back off.  Scout makes a terrible racket of thumping and swearing, finally emerging in the clothes Pauling picked for him.  The hat is only slightly different from his uniform, but the enormous black and white tracksuit is quite the departure from his uniform.  “What the fuck is wrong with Miami?”

Spy has similar feelings on the matter.  If this clothing selection is accurate, Florida has done something terrible to these people.

“Hey, you fixed the TV.  I figured you didn’t know how,” Scout says as he picks up his coffee.  To Spy’s disgust, he tosses back the espresso like shot. “Ugh, this stuff tastes like shit.”

“And that is why I only brought cheap coffee.”  He plucks the empty cup from Scout’s hands before he can do something stupid with it.  “I will be leaving in ten minutes. Be in the car or I will leave you behind.”

Scout mutters something like “asshole” under his breath, but collects his things all the same.

-

“ _Louisiana!_ ”  Scout slams his fist into Spy’s arm.  It’s the third poignantly forceful punch since they began driving this morning.

Spy takes a deep breath.  “You said the plates only counted if they are from another state.  We are still _in_ Louisiana.”

“Whoops, my bad,” Scout says in a tone that convey zero apology.  Another car drives by and he shouts, “ _Louisiana!”_ again.

Spy catches his fist this time.  “If you hit me _one more time_ , I will drive this car back to Teufort and tell Miss Pauling it is because you _failed._ ”

He means to sound threatening.  To his immense irritation, Scout bursts out laughing.  “That’s such a freakin’ dad thing to say.”

“It is not,” Spy says through gritted teeth, “It’s something adults say to children who cannot behave.”

“You tried to play the ‘quiet game’,” he says, making air-quotes the way Miss Pauling might, “You ‘grounded’ me, and now you’ve pulled ‘don’t make me turn this car around’.  Sure you don’t have kids running around somewhere? Oh, wait.”

Spy grits his teeth.  They will be at their first destination in eight hours.  Surely he can refrain from doing anything rash for that long.

“There’s another one!  I think the license plate starts with an ‘L’--”

-

Thanks to Engineer's ridiculous turbo-boosters (as he calls them), they arrive in Tampa by nightfall.  Spy finds an independent motel a few short miles from center city. The motel owner is a professional who offers a copy of the evening paper without asking why Spy is wearing sunglasses at night, or why his car is making repeated banging noises.  Spy smiles politely, pulls up to their room, and smugly lets Scout out of the trunk.

“I fuckin’ hate you,” Scout grumbles, massaging bloodflow back into his limbs.

“The feeling is mutual,” Spy replies, shoving Scout’s suitcase into his arms.  “Behave and you get to ride in the car tomorrow.”

Scout glares, but keeps his mouth shut and keeps the TV to a reasonable volume for this evening’s game.  For a while, Spy pretends not to notice the furtive staring he does between pitches, but he’d be a poor intelligence agent if he couldn’t recognize someone psyching themselves up to speak.  “Do you have something to say?” He asks without looking up from the paper.

Scout makes a face that suggests he’s thinking about something dangerous.  “Nah,” he says, “But uh. Do you wanna watch?”

“I do not follow baseball,” Spy says.

Scout looks away.  His face hardens and his shoulder hunch.  “Right. Probably not a thing in Europe or wherever.”

Spy studies him in his peripheral vision.  “No.”

Scout turns back to his program, but no longer seems to be paying attention.  He doesn’t say anything through the evening continues to hold his peace after the lights go out.

-

They leave early the next morning.  Scout, who has been quiet and, dare Spy say, _polite_ , gets to sit in the passenger seat.  He stares out the window and keeps the fidgeting to a minimum.  Even the radio remains untouched. It’s heavenly, better than Spy could have hoped.

It’s also suspicious.

“Scout.”

“What?”  Scout says, breathing on the window to doodle in the condensation.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You are always doing something, what is it?”

Scout throws his hands in the air.  “I’m not doing _anything!_  I’m not doing any of the shit you were complaining about: I’m not making noise, I’m not moving around, I don’t even have any gum.”

Spy’s eyes narrow.  “You are _always_ doing something.”

“For fuck’s sake, Spy, there’s nothing else for me to not do!  Do you want me to stop breathing, is that it? Am I breathing too loud?”

“You are certainly complaining too loudly now,” Spy snaps.

Scout makes a frustrated noise and a strangling gesture, then dives headfirst over the center console into the back seat.

“What are you doing?!”  Spy yells, holding the gearshift so Scout can’t kick it out of place.

“Fuck you,” Scout says as he squirms beneath their clothing and into the foot space, “Wake me up when we get wherever.”

“Oh yes very mature, hide in the backseat like a _child._ ”

Scout throws up a one-fingered salute in the rear view mirror.

“Good riddance,” Spy hisses, settling himself back into the driver’s seat.

The miles rack up in silence.  The sun creeps up over the horizon ahead of him, chasing off the night with pink and orange ombre.  It’s beautiful in a cliche sort of way, and as if he could not be more of a French stereotype, reminds him of the night he met Scout’s mother.

The second of Don Genarro’s five children, Minerva had wrenched the throne from her older brother who cited a sudden desire to become a painter in Canada and hasn’t been seen since, leaving her as mob boss of the greater New England area.  Spy met her one night at a bar, long after her (mostly peaceful) takeover. She had recently performed a (mostly peaceful) restructuring of her nuclear family, and was taking a rare night on the town before rolling up her sleeves and diving into single motherhood; Spy was paid by a rival gang to watch her for weaknesses.  She had seven (seven!) children, was six years his senior and wore her hair in a beehive and swore like it was going out of style and snorted when she laughed.

 _“Gonna stare all day,”_ she’d asked, _“Or are you gonna buy me a drink?”_

Her dress was a similar pink to today’s sky.  Upon taking the seat next to her, he’d found himself on the business end of a stiletto blade that, to this day, she will not tell him where she hid.  It hovered just over his femoral artery while the the bartender made her drink.

_“Here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to tell me what Donnie Mareto thinks he’s going to accomplish by ruining my fucking night off, then you’re going to pay my tab and just maybe I won’t have to ruin my new Ava Gardner dress with your arterial spray.”_

He never had a chance.

“Are you going to sulk back there all day?”  He asks the back seat.

Scout doesn’t reply.  He seems intent on sleeping, or possibly on ignoring Spy.

Spy knows Scout’s mother wants him to get along with their son.  It isn’t reasonable, there’s too much time and too many difficult emotions between them to ever be a ‘real family’ (her words, not his), but still he grits his teeth and asks, “What do you want for breakfast?”

The backseat yields no answer.

“I understand a traditional American breakfast involves pancakes.”

“Fuck off,” Scout mutters from under a sweater.

When Spy sees a diner advertised on the next exit board, he makes the executive decision to pull over for food.  He enters the establishment alone and orders a breakfast special and coffee. Scout, who is always less stubborn than hungry, shuffles in ten minutes later to a plate of eggs and bacon.

They don’t talk, but they don’t argue either.  Spy sips his coffee. The diner seems to be some kind of neutral ground between the arguing.

“You already eat yours?”  Scout asks.

“I ate in the motel.”

“Was it one of those weird-ass tiny dinners you keep in your teeth?”

“If you must know, it was fruit.  I managed to find some at a gas station yesterday.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see that part because I was locked in a trunk.”

“Hmm,” Spy says, pointedly not meeting Scout’s glare, “I remember you being insufferable and then much better behaved.”

Scout snorts, but doesn’t stop shoveling food into his mouth.  Breakfast seems to have mollified him. “You can never call Ma on me now, y’know.  I got the last word on everything because you _locked me in a trunk._ ”

Spy had considered this at the time, and ultimately decided a full eight hours of silence was worth the potential backlash.  “It seems our problem must stay between us.”

“No shit.”  Scout folds a pancake in half and starts loading eggs onto it like a tortilla.  “I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Oh?” Spy asks, watching breakfast foods pile into the makeshift tortilla.  It’s horrifying, yet fascinating to see what Scout will try to eat next.

“You like to keep your hands clean, I figured you’d be a wuss in an actual fight.”

“Just because I wash my hands--”

Scout makes a _stop_ gesture with the hand holding his breakfast wrap, splashing a drop of syrup on the table.  “Not like that, jackass. You always do things sneaky-like, all disappearing and backstabs and _‘right behind you’_.  You never take a guy head-on.  I didn’t think you’d be any good at it.”

Spy leans back in his seat and cocks an eyebrow.  He’s actually curious to see where this conversation goes.  “You have seen me kill enemies with my bare hands on multiple occasions.  What on Earth made you think I wouldn’t be able to fight you?”

Scout shrugs and bites off half the pancake concoction.  He mercifully does not try to talk around it until he’s finished.  “Mick says you’re a wuss.”

That gives Spy pause.  “I wasn’t aware you two were on first-name basis.”

“ _Sniper_ says your a wuss,” Scout says with an eye-roll.

“That man lives in a car and engages enemies by running five miles away and looking at them through a tube.  What does he know?”

“He’s got long arms,” Scout points out.

“That he uses to hold two tubes glued together.”

“Got a big knife.”

“Compensation,” Spy says.

Scout chokes on his food.  

Spy studies Scout’s face to make sure the sunglasses aren’t distorting his vision.  “Surely you are not--”

 _“No.”_  Scout bangs on his own chest to clear it, glaring at Spy through the endeavor.  Given the short duration of the choking, his face is redder than it should be. “Fuck no, and fuck you.  I don’t think of _anyone_ like that.”

“Good god, you are prude.  You are so American, you can’t stand even the thought of another man’s body.”

Scout grabs the remains of his breakfast off the plate.  “And that’s it for me.”

“How have you survived in the locker room for this long?  Everyone gets changed at the same time, surely you’ve seen--”

“Nope.”  Scout crosses the diner toward the door, pancakes in hand.  “Not talking about this.”

Spy sips his coffee as Scout makes his red-faced exit.  He spares a moment to imagine the pairing (what would Scout and the busman even do?  Go camping? The idea is laughable) and takes his time flagging down a waitress for the bill.  He is… not amused, but not completely irritated either. He muses on this as he leaves change on the table.

-

The address leads them off the highway, down a small side alley, then onto a wide road running parallel to the Tampa’s main street.  It clearly has no problems being less prestigious than the city center, with its more sedate traffic and fewer neon lights. It appeals to Spy’s sense of décor until they pull up to their destination.

“Non,” he says, helplessly staring up at the billboard.

“Hell _yeah!_ ” Scout says, already vaulting out of the car and over the hood.

 _MATINEE DOUBLE FEATURE,_ the theater sign announces proudly, _PSYCHO and BILLY THE KID V. DRACULA._

“Why would anyone put those things together,” Spy asks the empty car, as though it can save him.

The marquee is done up in dozens of lights.  Large, well-lit letters over the billboard proclaim that this mockery of an theater is called The Danvers, and the front window is lined with tacky second-hand movie memorabilia.  Spy reluctantly parks the car and approaches the ticket counter, where Scout is somehow already causing a commotion.

“And then it’s like _eeek-eeek-eeek!_  And she’s like _‘ahhh!’_ ,” he says, dramatically miming what appears to be a woman being murdered with a knife.

“Did you know they used chocolate sauce for the blood,” the ticket taker asks excitedly.  She can’t be older than sixteen, which puts her mental age a few years ahead of Scout’s. No wonder they’re getting along.

“Psh, yeah, everybody knows _that_ ,” Scout replies, sniffing in a way that communicates his complete lack of knowledge on the subject, “S’not like they could’ve used real blood or anything.”

“Two, please,” Spy interrupts unenthusiastically.

She takes his money (a complete waste of a dollar, they could have used that to buy _so much coffee_ ) and stamps their tickets.  “You’re in for a real treat, mister!  It’s a double feature, _Psycho_ and—”

“I saw the sign.”

His deadpan doesn’t seem to dampen her mood.  “Real good, both of ‘em. Enjoy!”

“I will not,” he says, grabbing the back of Scout’s jacket to drag him away from the counter before he can re-engage with the ticket taker.

“Fuck _off_ ,” Scout jabs an elbow into Spy’s ribs to make him let go.  “What’s your problem now?”

“I have to spend the next _four hours_ watching terrible American films,” Spy replies testily as they approach the gaudy front doors, “I will not spend one moment longer than necessary in this god forsaken excuse of an entertainment house.”

“Shoulda guessed you’d be a killjoy,” Scout says.

Spy is more than happy to have a target for his ire.  “And I should have guessed you’d like this kind of tasteless drivel.  Of course you would enjoy watching a deranged man kill naked women in showers, and whatever the second monstrosity is.”

“Billy the Kid fights Dracula the Vampire. It ain’t that deep, dumbass.”

Spy responds by shoving Scout into the doorframe.  It makes him feel a little better, and better still when Scout retaliates by tackling him into the popcorn stand and starting a short brawl in the wreckage.  Unfortunately they seem to have found the East Coast’s most tolerant theater, as the fight only earns them an escort to their seats and a stern warning that further destruction of property will earn them a fine.

“Fuck,” Scout gripes after the usher leaves, “I wanted a coffee, you asshole.”

“I was hoping we'd be thrown out,” Spy says gloomily.

“You were willing to throw the whole freakin’ mission just so you wouldn’t have to sit through a _movie?_ ”

“Two movies,” Spy corrects, crossing his arms and sliding down in his chair.  It sticks to the back of his jacket, as though to really, truly emphasize how badly his day has been ruined.

The lights dim, and Spy switches his sunglasses for the tinted pair provided by Miss Pauling.  To his disgust, they’re still sticky from Scout’s gummy brush with death. He picks at the residue through the opening credits before sliding them on, bathing the black-and-white movie in shades of pink.  Despite the color change, _Psycho_ doesn’t deviate from its usual story: man and woman cannot be together due to financial problems so woman steals money from her employer in the name of love (or something, he doesn’t really care).

“The costuming in this movie is terrible,” Spy grumbles, “And why must we see every errant thought that runs through her head?  It ruins the pacing.”

“Shut up,” Scout says without looking away from the screen.

The movie drags on.  Spy watches half-heartedly.

“They could have cut half of this so-called plot and had the same film.  This could have been a commercial between segments of a soap opera.”

“If you’re so freakin’ miserable, give me the glasses and go do something else,” Scout hisses.

It’s a tempting offer, but Spy has seen Scout become distracted by his own shoelaces while pinned down by enemy fire.  There’s no guarantee he’ll be able to watch a movie and keep an eye for the film’s encoded messages at the same time. He explains this to Scout, who has some creative ideas about what Spy can do with his ‘shitty fuck-ass opinions on other people’s fuckin’ attention problems’.

“You do not have ‘attention problems’,” Spy says, disdainfully eyeing Scout’s bouncing leg, “You have a problem paying attention.”

Scout snorts.  “Oh yeah, I’m gonna take _your_ word for it.”

Something about the way Scout emphasizes ‘your’ in ‘your word’ sticks in Spy’s head.  He picks at it until the thread unravels into clarity. “Medic has been focusing your attention with the energy drinks.  That’s why the caffeine content is so high.”

“Duh,” Scout says.

It’s painfully obvious in hindsight.  Spy watches him for another moment, reexamining all the fidgeting and chattering in this new light.  He pulls a balisong from one of the many hidden pockets he’d sewn into his ridiculous disguise. “Give me your hand.”

This finally draws Scout’s eyes from the screen. “Uh,” he says, eyeing the knife, “No.”

Spy flips it open in the simple three-step clockwise rotation. He does this again more slowly, then puts the knife in Scout’s hand. “Do you understand?”

“What the fuck,” Scout says, which probably also means ‘no’.

Spy walks him through the steps again. Scout’s eyes keep darting between Spy’s face and the knife in his hands until he finally tries to open it himself.  He immediately nicks his palm, but the cut is shallow and Spy trusts Scout to be undeterred by a little blood. With uncharacteristic patience, he guides Scout’s hands through the motions until he can replicate them on his own.

“Good.” Spy watches until he is satisfied Scout won’t cut off his fingers, then returns his attention to the movie. “Do that.”

“Why?” Scout asks as he continues flips the blade open and closed.

“Having your hands occupied will help you concentrate.” He glances to where Scout is playing with the knife. “It is something your mother used to do.”

Scout moves the balisong through open and closed a few more times. “I guess so.  She messes with hair pins, though.” He curses when he misses a catch and has to close the handles manually.

Spy’s knife continues to click in Scout’s hands as the movie ponderously waddles on.  He receives a few cuts, but his fingers remain firmly attached and his leg stops bouncing so Spy considers this a success.

Because Mikhail is a bastard, their secret message doesn’t turn up until the end of the movie. He’s somehow managed to highlight specific letters in the credits.  Spy jots them down to spell out a second address and flees the theater. Surprisingly, Scout follows him with minimal complaints, still fiddling with the knife as they walk back to the parking lot.  It would be satisfying to put him down for _playing with a knife in public, you ridiculous child_.  The insult rises easily on Spy’s tongue, but he finds that he cares less about public opinion than Scout’s ability to focus.  Besides, he’s gaining fluidity with the motions, and can now talk and flip at the same time.

“You owe me a movie,” Scout says as Spy pops the trunk.

“I taught you how to open a knife without killing yourself,” Spy replies, locating a map and shoving their luggage aside to spread it out, “Surely that’s time better spent than watching a movie about cowmen and vampires.”

“I bet Pyro can get the _Billy the Kid_ movie when we get back to base.”  Scout leans back against the car, spinning the knife around his finger in a trick Spy did not teach him, as Spy runs his finger across the roads. “So what’s the place?”

The address is a small dawn-to-dusk park in the heart of Miami. Spy memorizes the location and briefly considers slamming the trunk closed on Scout’s jacket. “Apparently we are going to walk in a park,” he says, shooing Scout away from the car to close the trunk instead.

“Now?”

“There was no time indicated, so I can only assume we are meant to attend now.”

-

They drive for slightly less than two hours and reach Mikhail’s park by mid-afternoon.  It’s a small area in a well-to-do neighborhood, idyllically green and tropical with a stunning view of the ocean.  Places where nothing dark or shady could ever happen, which of course means they happen all the time. Spy counts no less than three loitering pairs of individuals engaged in some sort of covert operations.

A man in a trenchcoat is sitting alone on bench.  Spy recognizes his curly blond hair and boyish face.

“Hey, uh.”  Scout continues to fidget with the knife as he leans against the car.  The plan is for him to stand guard while Spy conducts business.

“Put that away during work,” Spy says.

Scout pockets it, still looking at his own hands.  “Once this is done, maybe we could… get lunch? I think I saw a hot dog stand back there--”

“No hot dogs,” Spy says reflexively.  “But,” he continues when Scout looks away, “I suppose it’s been a while since I indulged in food that could kill me.  We could search for some facsimile of poutine.”

“Is that a food?”  Scout asks cautiously.

“It is fried potatoes with cheese and gravy.”

Scout lights up.  He somehow does it with his entire body.  “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Something like fondness wriggles in Spy’s gut.  He squashes it and turns on his heel towards the man on the bench, surrounded by palm trees and well manicured grass.  

“Mikhail,” Spy says cordially.

He is older than the man from ten years ago, but Spy supposes time has it's way with them all.  His blond hair is speckled with grey and his face has a few more lines, but his eyes and smile still hold the charm Spy remembers.  Mikhail smiles warmly and says an old name. “Still afraid to show the world your beautiful face?”

“Something like that.”  Spy takes a seat next to him on the bench.  “Are you well?”

“Something like that,” Mikhail says playfully.  “You appear to be doing well yourself,” he says with a nod to the car.

Spy makes a face.  “A coworker.”

“Available, then?”

Spy huffs out a laugh.  “He is not to your tastes.”

“I suppose you would know,” Mikhail says.  He leans back against the bench and looks skyward.  “I have information for your company.”

“I believe that’s why I am here,” Spy replies.

Mikhail hums.  “I wish I could put this off a little longer.  It would be nice to catch up.”

“There is time,” Spy says.  He glances around, but the park is still as idyllic as the moment he sat down.  There is nothing to justify the sudden, creeping feeling that something is wrong.

“Hmm, there isn’t.”  Mikhail smiles warmly.  “Do you know what your company does?  The kind of havoc it brings on this town?”

Spy cocks an eyebrow.  “I understand it sells bread.”

“They say they disseminate bread to fellow subsidiaries,” Mikhail says agreeably, “But did you ever look into what _kind_ of bread?  It begins as regular whole-wheat, but over time evolves into some a hulking, ravenous monstrosity.  Have you seen it, _solnyshka_?  Towering, hungry bread erupting from buildings to devour everything in its path.”

“Ah.”

“Ah indeed.”

The breeze ruffles through the park.

“I do hope you’ll understand,” Mikhail says.  A gun has materialized in his hand, aimed at Spy’s mid-section.  “I need to know what those things are, and how to stop them.”

“You know I will not talk,” Spy says evenly.

“I am well aware.  I am only here to hold you in place.”

Someone yells.  Spy’s head snaps in the direction of the noise.  Sure enough, three large men are trying to wrestle Scout away from their car, which appears to be smoking, and into one of three identical black vehicles.  One man is cradling his hand, another has Scout’s arms twisted behind his back, and the third shoving something between Scout’s teeth to keep him from biting again.  Scout manages to throw his weight back and kick out, but the third man catches his legs and lifts him off the ground.

“Please understand, this isn’t personal,” Mikhail says, laying a hand on Spy’s cheek.  He runs his hand up Spy’s face to his head, brushing back the hood and carding his fingers through Spy’s short hair.  “You used to keep your hair long. The mask has taken so much from you.”

Across the parking lot, Scout’s eyes widen.  The men use his momentary distraction to dump him into the trunk and slam the lid.

“You don’t usually worry about coworkers,” Mikhail says mildly, “Who is that?”

The car engine starts.  They’re going to torture Scout for information he does not have, and when they realize he knows nothing and is worth nothing to RED, they’re going to kill him.  Spy feels an uncharacteristic tremor move through his limbs and has the irrational thought that they won’t get the chance to eat dangerously unhealthy food together.  The thought is surprisingly upsetting.

In one well-practiced motion, he pulls a knife from the hood lying against his shoulders and buries it between the bones of Mikhail’s wrist.  Mikhail yells in shocked pain, and Spy plucks the gun free as his muscles spasm. Later, he’ll remember that Mikhail always carried as many guns as Spy carried knives and wonder why he let him go; presently, he sprints to the smoldering car, yanks the door open, and jams the key home.  The various indicators tell him the secondary boosters have been sabotaged, but the men seem to have (somehow, thankfully) missed the primary engine in their search. It jumps to life and he peels out of the parking lot after the intimidating Russian cars.

Spy can’t risk ramming the wrong car, so he weaves in and out of traffic and follows the line of cars onto the highway.  Each car seems to have three passengers: two extremely muscled men and an extremely muscled woman dressed in identical black suits.  The cars split apart into three separate lanes; Spy glances at an overhead road sign as it zips by. Apparently a series of off-ramps will be coming up in twenty miles.  He’s certain each car will take different exit, giving him a one-in-three chance of finding Scout if he can’t identify the correct car. Spy swears under his breath and stomps on the accelerator.

The car on his right rolls down the backseat window and an agent slots a machine gun into a door-mounted holder.  Spy doesn’t bother rolling down his own window before aiming Mikhail’s gun and pulling the trigger three times in succession.  In the same moment, the backseat agent squeezes off a spray of shots, peppering the RED car with some kind of small ammunition.  The agent takes a shot to the shoulder and Spy feels the impact of a bullet somewhere in his thigh. He can’t feel the pain now, but it will certainly require medical attention later.  The cars veer apart, but Spy keeps firing until something in the Russian car begins to smoke. It begins to decelerate towards the shoulder, and Spy can drop back behind a civilian car for cover.

Something in his own car’s underbelly begins to make a rapid knocking noise, but the car is still moving so it will have to wait.

As he slides behind the cover car, one of the two remaining vehicles begins to weave in its lane.  It nearly jerks over the yellow line, corrects course, then breaks abruptly, leaving smoking tire marks on the road.  A civilian car lays on the horn, then swerves aside when the passenger door bursts open and an agent is ejected from the cabin.  Spy speeds up to keep pace with the bucking car just as a woman’s head crashes through the driver’s side window, followed closely by her body flying out the open passenger door.  Cars behind them skid and lurch to avoid the agents on the road, but Spy focuses on the driver’s seat where Scout is struggling with the final agent. He’s got both legs twisted into the passenger seat where he appears to be trying to kick him head-first out the door.

He’s shouting something.  Spy can’t hear him over the roaring wind and sounds of wheels on the asphalt, but he’s sure it’s absolutely vulgar.

“Scout,” he yells across their broken windows and several feet of tarmac, “Are you alright?”

“Do I look fuckin’ alright?!”  Scout shouts back. He’s repeatedly stomping heel into the man’s face while somehow still keeping the car on track.

“It’s hard to tell with you,” Spy admits.

“Hard to tell with me?!  It’s hard to tell with _you_ , you--”  The wind whips away his words, but Spy knows the look on his face.  It pairs with disgust and betrayal he’d shown when Mikhail ran his fingers through Spy’s hair in the park.

Before Scout can respond further, a hand grabs his face and shoves his head out the broken window.  Scout grapples with the agent, but the man grabs his shoulders and pins him to the door. One of them hits the handle and it flies open, stretching Scout precariously between the chassis and door.

If he isn’t killed on impact with the road at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, one of the unwitting civilian cars will surely finish the job.  Spy reaches across the passenger’s seat and jerks his own door open.

“Scout,” he shouts, “ _Jump!_ ”

The agent has a death grip on Scout’s shirt.  Scout glances over to judge the distance, then pulls Spy’s ballisong from his pocket.  He flips it open and slams it into the agent’s forearm; the agent screams and snatches his hand back, allowing Scout to throw his weight against the door to swing it fully open.  At the height of its arc, he braces against the frame and launches himself across the gap.

Spy already has an arm out.  Scout’s momentum slams the door shut and he clutches Spy’s arm with both hands, using it to slither through the broken window into the passenger-side foot space.

“Holy shit,” he breathes.

Spy takes unsteady aim and shoots in the driver’s direction until the car begins to veer off the road.  If the man isn’t dead, he is at least incapacitated enough to drop pursuit.

Now that Scout has returned to the car, Spy’s leg reminds him of its injury at full volume.  “Can you drive?”

Surprisingly, Scout assesses the situation with some degree of success.  He stretches across the gearshift to the pedals. “You steer, I got this.”

-

They rocket along, dodging and weaving until they can sneak onto a tiny off-ramp, leaving the last functional Russian car to speed ahead in search of them.  Despite this success, the car continues making clunking noises until the engine cuts out two miles later. They pull over onto a relatively even patch of dirt shoulder, then tumble out of the car in a disorganized pile of limbs and blood.

“Do you know what you’re doing?”  Spy asks as he eases himself to the ground.  An exposed stretch of hot Florida road isn’t an ideal place for injury assessment, but it will have to do.

Scout has already popped the hood.  His shirt is in tatters, but being kidnapped by Russian spies and jumping through a broken window doesn’t seem to have caused more than superficial lacerations and a few bruises.  “Chill, Spy, I got this,” he snaps.

Spy raises an eyebrow.  Scout’s emotional capacity is usually as nuanced as his extremely short attention span, but he’s been dwelling on something since their meeting with Mikhail.  “Are you still upset that I had a life before returning to your mother?”

“Fuck you,” Scout spits, jamming the hood-prop into place with unnecessary force.

Spy sneers.  “I see. And if that wasn’t uncomfortable enough, to find out I spend that time with a _man_ , well.  No wonder you’re disgusted.”

“You’ve got no fuckin’ idea,” Scout mutters as he starts examining under the hood.

“No no, I understand perfectly well.”  Spy extracts a knife from his sock garter and begins cutting his pant leg.  “You are like every other bigot I’ve had the misfortune to know.”

“First: shut up.  Second: fuck off.”

Maybe it’s the waning adrenaline making him shaky and confrontational, but Spy does not want to fuck off about this.  “It makes sense, I suppose. Finding out your father had a perfectly normal life with a _man_ \--”’

“I thought all you wanted was for me to be quiet-- what the fuck _,_ ” Scout yanks something loose from the car’s guts and examines it in the sun.  “You kept a _knife_ in the _engine?_  Were you trying to kill us?!”

“As it turns out, it would have been no great loss.”  Spy turns his attention to his own leg. The bullet seems to have gone cleanly through his vastus lateralis muscle, which is the best he can hope for given the circumstances.  He begins shredding his lower pant leg into strips.

Scout snarls and hurls the knife.  It sticks into the ground a short foot from Spy’s hand.

“ _Watch it,_ ” Spy growls.

“I thought you dying wouldn’t a been a big deal?”

Scout’s Boston accent thickens when he’s angry, just like Minnie’s.  “Your mother will be so disappointed to learn you don’t approve of me,” he jabs.

“You don’t--” Scout wrestles violently with some piece of machinery, “Fuckin’--” He loses his grip on the part and screams in frustration, “ _You don’t get it!”_

“Oh, this should be good,” Spy sneers, “Go ahead and enlighten me, then.  Tell me why you, a grown man, are shrieking like a child at the prospect of two men together.”

Scout glares, then returns to staring at the car’s stubborn mechanics.  “Fuck you so many fuckin’ times. Fine. _Fine._  You got a right to know why this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, seeing as it’s all your fault.”

Spy winds the makeshift bandages around the bullet hole.  “Truly, I am all ears,” he says sarcastically.

“I didn’t have anything _normal_ growin’ up,” Scout says as he tries to twist some cap or another, “Because I didn’t have a dad.  You know that part.”

Spy rolls his eyes and doesn’t rise to the bait.

“Well, I want a big-ass family one day.  A dozen kids piled into one huge fuckin’ house, all happy and.”  He hiccups and wipes sweat from his forehead. “And I got to RED team and I like Miss Pauling, you know, like like-like, and I thought finally, I can have those kids without--”

Spy belated starts to wonder if something is wrong.

Scout’s fingers skitter on the cap.  “Without worrying, because I could finally give them _normal_ because _I’m_ finally normal,” he hiccups again, “But if it’s genetic then I can never--”

“Scout?”

“I’ll never be--”

He doesn’t have hiccups, he’s gasping for air.  Scout is having a panic attack.

“Scout _breathe._ ”

He doesn’t seem to hear him.  He’s hunched over the car on shaking arms, both hands braced on the hot metal chassis even though it must be burning his palms and he isn’t breathing properly, just making small hiccuping noises as he fights for control.

In what he’ll later consider his first fatherly act, Spy lunges forward, ignoring the spike of pain up his leg, and socks Scout straight across the face.  They both reel back and lose balance, toppling onto the asphalt road. Scout, shocked out of his panic, takes a great, heaving breath and starts swearing a blue streak he could only have learned at his mother’s knee.

Spy’s leg tells him this was a bad idea.  He grits his teeth hard enough to make his jaw creek, but he does not agree.  “Are you still breathing?”

“Fuck you,” Scout gasps.

“Good.”  He drags himself up onto his elbows by sheer force of will.  “You must keep breathing because I can’t reach you to do that again.”

Scout is glaring at him through wet eyes as he cradles his cheek.  “You punched me in the face.”

“You’re welcome.”  Spy lets his head hang low as he catches his own breath.  “I will only say this one time so listen very closely. There is nothing wrong with me, and there is nothing wrong with _you_.  Understand?”

Apparently he will have to repeat himself because Scout rolls to face away from him with a mumbled “you don’t know _anything_ ”.  Spy drags himself forward, reaches around Scout’s torso to grab the front of his shirt, and jerks him onto his back.

“You listen to me you little pest.  You have many, _many_ things to be ashamed of.  You are irritating, and stupid, and have somehow reached the age of twenty-seven without learning that all doors handles are labeled with _push_ or _pull_ .  I have seen your laundry habits and they are revolting.  I don’t know how you carry half of my genes because not a day goes by where I don’t look upon you with both horror and mortal embarrassment.  I cannot even begin to count the things you should be ashamed of but _this is not one of them._ ”

Scout stares at Spy’s face.  His lungs are still hitching, but he’s breathing and that’s what matters.

Spy holds his breath for a count of three, then lets it slowly back out.  He gently takes Scout’s chin in hand. “Let me see.”

“Fuck you,” Scout mumbles, but doesn’t resist when Spy turns his head to assess the damage.

His cheek is already red and starting to swell.  There will be an impressive bruise by morning, but the skin is unbroken and his jaw bones seem fine.  “You’re alright. I don’t have any ice or I would have used it on myself.”

“I’m telling Ma you punched me in the face,” Scout says petulantly.

“I’ll tell her you swore at me,” Spy counters, “We’ll both be killed.”

Scout barks out a laugh, wincing as it pulls his facial muscles.  “Yeah. _Fuck_ you’ve got a mean right hook.”

“So I’ve been told.”

They lie panting on the hot tarmac.  Spy is in immeasurable pain, yet he feels… good?  Satisfied, like this is the first thing he’s done right in a long time.  He wonders if this is how _parental_ feels.

“Think you could teach me that?”  Scout asks.

Spy rolls onto his back and forces himself to sit upright.  “Let’s get out of here, then I’ll consider teaching you how to punch.”

This is, of course, when Spy registers the rumbling approach of a car engine.  He leans into the road to confirm: a large black car is driving up the road toward them.  Scout follows his line of sight and begins to swear.

“Scout—”

Scout is already pulling Spy’s arm over his shoulder.  “Nope.”

“Scout, listen to me—”

“No.”

“ _Scout._  They will be here any moment, the car is not working and I cannot run.  You need to—”

“Need to _what?_ ” Scout gestures to the road surrounding scrubland. “There's nowhere to hide, and I can't outrun a car!  And, even if I could do something, I ain’t leaving you here to get killed.”

“Get under the car,” Spy finishes lamely.  “I can distract them while you figure out what to do.”

“I said I ain’t—”

A black car pulls over behind theirs.

“I will find a way out of this,” Spy whispers, “It will be alright.”

“You're such a fuckin' liar,” Scout hisses back.

Spy squeezes his shoulder.  “ _Go._ ”  

Scout finally skirts around the side of the car when the Russian doors pop open.  Spy takes a breath to sit up and compose himself, carefully opening a knife in each sleeve as two heavy sets of footsteps crunch across the gravel.

One of the hulking agents says something.  Spy’s Russian isn’t fluent, but he picks out enough to know these people aren’t pleased about the car chase and dead coworkers.

“Lady,” he says cordially, “Gentleman.  Weren’t there three of you?”

“And two of you,” the man replies.  “It seems our missing comrades will have to find each other.”

Spy subtly shifts his weight off his injured leg.  “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Oh yes,” the woman says, cracking her knuckles with a grin.  Her partner pulls a pistol from his pocket and levels it at Spy’s head.

“Small man,” he calls loudly, “If you run, I kill your friend.”

“We are hardly friends,” Spy mutters.

The man thumbs back the safety.  “You have until three. One.”

“You are wasting your time. He went for help and will be miles away by now--”

“Two--”

Somewhere behind them, glass shatters.  The woman jerks toward the sound, but the man does not so much as flinch.

“Ah,” the woman says, pulling an identical pistol from her own jacket, “There you are.”

She disappears from view, followed by the sound of several feet scuffling across dirt and broken glass.  Someone yells, then gurgles; someone punches someone else hard enough to activate their gag reflex. The struggle ends, and one set of footsteps return.

Scout is dumped on the ground next to Spy.  His front is covered in Russian arterial spray, and he immediately curls around his injured stomach and begins to wretch.  Both agents step back to avoid the resulting stomach contents.

“Petrov is dead,” the woman says.  She annoyed, rather than upset, about this turn of events.  Apparently these agents are consummate professionals.

“Unfortunate,” the man replies, passing the woman his gun.  “Put the body in this car and set it on fire.”

“ _Don’t burn my stuff,_ ” Scout wheezes.

Spy rolls his eyes.  “I will buy you a dozen new baseball bats if we survive this.”

“You will not,” the man says cheerfully.  

Under the woman’s watchful aim, he moves Scout’s arms behind his back and cuffs them together.  He does the same thing to Spy, then escorts him to the Russian car trunk with surprising care while his associate relocates “Petrov’s” body.  Scout, who has apparently earned considerably rougher treatment, is unceremoniously dropped in next to him.

“We will be driving for the next few hours,” the man says, “Please be patient.  Thank you for your cooperation.”

He slams the lid closed.

The trunk would be spacious enough for two grown men to lie head-to-toe in relative comfort if it weren’t also occupied by several large boxes.  Spy is forced to hunch his knees up and curl his torso forward toward Scout’s chest. He can just make out Scout’s silhouette in the light filtering in from a gap in the tail light.

Scout groans.

“If you throw up on me, you will not live long enough to be tortured,” Spy says.  He rolls his shoulders and bumps an arm against the trunk lid.

“You’re freakin’ welcome,” Scout replies.

“Oh yes, thank you so very much for getting me locked in a trunk with you.  Stop squirming, there isn’t enough room.”

As usual, Scout completely ignores him and continues to fidget.  “What are you complaining about? I saved your life.”

The car begins to cough.  Spy holds a momentary hope that the engine was damaged during the chase, but it, too, ignores him and turns over.  The wheels rolls along the gravel, then along the smoother asphalt as they drive back onto the road. “You had a chance to get away.  One had to watch me, you could have taken them out individually.”

“After they killed you, right?”

“I am incapacitated and the car will not work.  One of us getting out was the best case scenario, and since ‘incapacitated’ means ‘unable to run from Russian hit men’, it was meant to be _you_ .”  Spy grunts as Scout headbutts his chest.  “Would you stop _moving?”_

“Hold on a sec.”

“There are no more seconds to hold on to!”  Spy sighs heavily. “I was prepared to die for you, you imbecile.”

“Whoa.  Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”  Spy attempts to find a more comfortable position for his shoulders.  He fails miserably, just as he seems to have failed at so many things.  “Your mother wants us to be a family. Until recently I thought it was impossible, and now that I would like to try, we are out of time.”

“You…?”  Scout clears his throat in a way that doesn’t actually cover his cracking voice.  “I thought you hated me.”

“I cannot honestly say that I like you, but no, I do not hate you.”

The tires grind against the uneven road.  Spy wonders how much can be said in the handful of hours they have left.

“I don’t hate you either,” Scout says quietly.

Spy smiles humorlessly.  “It’s amazing how easy it is to be honest at the end of one’s life.”

Scout clears his throat again.  “Yeah, no. I don’t like that.”

There’s a click, and a moment later something smacks Spy hard enough to jerk his head to the side.  “ _Merde!_ ”  He swears, more surprised than hurt.

“Whoops.  Where’s your hands, asshole?  We’re bustin’ out of here.”

“Did you just _slap me?_ ” Spy asks incredulously.

“Nah, I turned upside-down when you weren’t looking and kicked you in the face.  Of course I slapped you, you freakin’ drama queen.” Scout starts patting down Spy’s shoulders.  “Calm the fuck down.”

“ _I am calm!”_  

“Make peace with your maker in silence,” someone yells from the cabin.

They freeze.  Spy takes a deep breath to center himself as Scout cautiously continues the search for his hands.  “I am calm. Please explain.”

Scout jingles something.  Spy can just make out his grin in the murky darkness.  “Got the keys.”

“I see.”  Deep breaths, in and out.  “And where did you get them?”

“The lady’s pocket, when she was carrying me back to the car.”  Scout finally locates Spy’s bound hands and shoves something into the locking mechanism, twisting it about until the cuffs pop open.  “Couldn’t have got them if I’d run.”

Spy rubs his wrists where the handcuffs bit in.  “No, I suppose you couldn’t have,” he replies. “Does this plan of yours have further details?”

“Yep,” Scout says, army-crawling into the mess of boxes.  “Get the keys, get dumped in the trunk, use the keys to get free.  Then--” He makes a triumphant noise and shoves an assortment of things into Spy’s chest.  “Use the stuff I stashed before killing the Rooski to get in some batting and shooting practice.”

Spy examines the things he’s holding.  It’s Scout’s scattergun which, upon inspection, comes fully loaded and with almost a dozen rounds of ammunition.  He has no idea how Scout managed to hide all this in the time between Spy’s capture and killing the Russian agent.  For once, he doesn’t care to question it.

“I got into the car through the backseat armrest last time,” Scout says, draping his bat over his shoulder.  “You up for it?”

It’s a challenge.  Trapped in a Russian car trunk in the middle of the god-forsaken state of Florida with his occasionally clever son, Spy grins and cracks the shotgun’s chamber back into place.  “I could be persuaded.”

-

It takes a full week to drive their newly acquired car way back to base.  Spy limps to Miss Pauling’s office under his own power because he’ll be damned before he shows weakness in front of his own team.

“Did it go well?”  Miss Pauling asks during debriefing.  Both her eyebrows have crept up her forehead as she takes them in their grungey clothing and motley collection of injuries.

“Yes,” Spy replies.

“We escaped and are still alive,” Scout says with a wide grin.

“Mikhail betrayed us,” Spy elaborates, “Apparently he is upset with RED setting monsters on his organization.”

Miss Pauling jots something down on her clipboard.  “The Administrator thought that might be the case. Thank you for looking into it.”  She eyes their assorted injuries. “Do you require medical attention?”

“Nothing more than a moment with the medigun,” Spy says quickly.  They’d robbed a pharmacy on the way home for supplies to stabilize Spy’s leg, and after learning about the energy drink experiments, Spy finds himself strangely opposed to leaving Scout in Medic’s dubious care.  Will wonders never cease?

“Alright then.  You can submit your reports tomorrow, go ahead and turn in.”

Spy gives his thanks and leaves so Scout can kiss Miss Pauling’s cheek in goodbye.  “What on Earth does she see in you,” he asks as they hobble towards the residential hall.

“Dunno,” Scout says good-naturedly.  “Also fuck you.”

Spy thinks of his own relationship with Scout’s mother.  To be honest, he doesn’t know what such a beautiful and terrifying woman sees in him either.  The only explanation is that he passed on some kind of charm and luck to the next generation. The thought is warming.  “Fuck you too,” he replies fondly.

-

Epilogue:

Spy stakes out an armchair at the common room table early the next morning, supplying himself a full cup of coffee and the extended edition of the morning paper for cover.  Sniper’s schedule on their days off can be unpredictable --Spy has known his to rise with the sun, but has also known him to sleep until noon and stay up until the next sunrise-- and he doesn’t want to miss him.

Sure enough, Sniper makes his appearance an hour later.  He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt and ratty jeans (two of the few casual clothing items he owns) and, for some unfathomable reason, his dirty hat and outdated sunglasses.  Spy has only seen him take them off in sleep and death. He perhaps thinks it makes him look professional, which says something grievous about the man’s sense of style.

Sniper wanders into the kitchen and pulls a jar of something Australian down from the shelves.  Spy surreptitiously watches him rummage through the fridge, presumably looking for bread to put in the toaster, then fill the coffee pot Spy purposefully left empty.  He chooses the bland, American blend when the clearly superior European style roast is right next to it on the shelf. Poor taste in weapons, poor taste in clothes, poor taste in coffee; Sniper is a conglomerate of bad decisions piled into the shape of a man with a hat.  No wonder Scout is so thoroughly charmed.

The door slams open, causing Sniper to fumble the coffee container and spill half the grounds into the sink.  Good riddance.

“Yo Spy,” Scout calls, jogging across the room as Sniper swears about the coffee on his ‘last good jumper’.

“...good morning,” Spy says.

Scout slings himself into an adjacent chair.  “Guess what I got in the mail.”

“I do not care.”

Scout extracts a few papers from his pocket.  They are wrinkled from storage in his disgusting pants, but still creased into the distinct tri-fold of something sent in an envelope.  “You’ll never guess.”

Spy fixes Scout with his least impressed stare and takes a long, deliberate sip of his coffee.  “A letter,” he says at length.

“Jackass,” Scout says affably.  “Yeah, a letter. It’s from your gay Russian buddy.”

Spy feels his eyebrows creep upwards.  “What does he want?”

“He _says_ he wants to tell me embarrassing stories about when you guys were together.”

 _“What?_ ”

Scout jerks the papers back before Spy can grab them.  “ _Dear Scout_ ,” he reads, “ _I write in the hopes of introducing myself, since there was no opportunity to do so at our last meeting.  I hope you’ll excuse my lack of manners_ \--ooo, there’s a semicolon here, fuckin’ fancy-- _as I’d been sent to kill you, I could not let down the appearance of professionalism without risking my employers' suspicion.”_

Spy reaches over the side table for the letter.  Scout braces a foot against the floor and tips his armchair sideways to keep it out of reach.

“ _In the name of the good relations I’d like to build between us, I will hazard a guess: if I know your ‘coworker’, and I like to think I do, he will not have given any details about his life.  Twenty-seven years is a long time to go with no information about one’s ‘coworker’.”_

“Stop that,” Spy snaps, shoving Scout’s foot out from under him.  The chair over-balances and thumps to the floor; Scout somehow bounces to his feet and dances just out of Spy’s increasingly desperate reach.

 _“For instance,_ ” Scout continues mercilessly, jogging backwards as Spy storms toward him, _“You probably don’t know that he has a terrible snore.  It can be heard down the hall with the door closed. He takes great pains to silence himself, lest any bunkmates learn of this terrible secret.”_

“Scout,” Spy hisses in warning.

 _“And that he has a tattoo on his lower back_ \--holy shit, Spy, you got a _tramp stamp?!_ \-- _from overestimating his alcohol tolerance during a mission.  Charmingly, it’s in the shape of a--”_

Finally giving up the pretense of composure, Spy tackles his son into the couch.  They grapple violently for the letter (growing up with seven brothers seems to have made Scout depressingly prone to biting) until Spy manages to twist Scout’s arm behind his back and forcibly pry the papers out of his hand.

“You will not speak of this,” Spy says, “Nor will you answer it--”

“Already did,” Scout says with a grin.

Spy makes a noise of disgust and shoves Scout’s head between the cushions.  It muffles Scout’s laughter but, infuriatingly, doesn’t stop it.

“S’not a bad thing,” says Sniper, who naturally chooses this moment to re-materialize from the kitchen to lean against the common room wall with his stupid ‘#1 Sniper’ mug in hand.  “You okay there, kiddo?”

Scout says something about not being able to breathe

“You’re fine,” Spy snaps, “And _you_ will not speak of this either, bushman.”

Sniper remains unaffected.  “I’m serious. You were never gonna tell him anything, right?”

“Of course not.”

“Now you’ve got something to talk about, and a few embarrassing stories are a good start to being a better dad.”

Scout makes a long series of outraged noises.  Spy catches _“oh my god”_ and _“what the fuck”_ and _“does he fuckin’ know?”_ and “ _why_ _am I the last person to know about this?!”_ before Scout finally passes out from the oxygen deprivation.

“You’re gonna kill him,” Sniper says off-handedly.

“He’s fine,” Spy says again, “Explain yourself.”

He shrugs.  “Meant what I said.  You owe your kid something for running off.  He can get to know you and have a laugh at the same time.”

Spy considers this.  This certainly isn’t what he would have chosen, but Sniper has a point.  “You suggest I allow an internationally renouned assassin to correspond with my _son_.  In the hopes that it will bring us together?”

Sniper takes a long drink from his mug.  It’s the same gesture Spy used earlier. Spy knows it, and he’s certain Sniper knows he knows.

“I don’t like you,” Spy says.

“Don’t care,” Sniper replies between sips, “Wanna tell me why you were watching me?”

Spy finally releases his grip on the back of Scout’s head and pulls him out of the couch.  Once he’s sure Scout is still alive, he turns back to the conversation. “I was trying to understand what Scout sees in you.”

Sniper raises an eyebrow.  

“I did not find anything worth understanding, but he seems to enjoy your company for some reason.  Perhaps that is enough.” Spy tugs his suit jacket back into place. “Do try to be less of a bad influence, hmm?”

“I’m not a--”

“Make sure he does not die,” he says, straightening his tie.  “ _Au revoir_ , bushman; _au bientot_ , Scout.”

“Bye,” Scout replies woozily.

Spy takes his leave as Sniper props Scout into a sitting position.  The door closes on Sniper informing Scout that’s he’s fine, Scout mumbling something about hearing that a lot lately.

The door closes behind him.  Spy lights a cigarette from his case, breathes in the smoke, and lets it slowly hiss back out.  There is no fighting today. Perhaps he will pay the good doctor a visit to discuss his ‘energy drink’ experiments.

**Author's Note:**

> So that got a little out of hand. Hope you enjoyed! If you have any thoughts/want to throw around ideas, please don't hesitate to reach out at [my tumblr](http://spinach-productions.tumblr.com). Thanks for reading!


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